“I found out that my (voting) rights have been restored, and I will be able to have my voice in this year’s election on all of the issues that I have advocated for across this country,” the Richmond native and voting rights advocate said.

A life-sized bronze statue of civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer is unveiled at the Fannie Lou Hamer Memorial Gardens in Ruleville, Miss., Friday, Oct. 5, 2012. Hamer, who died of cancer in 1977, drew national attention in 1964 when she and other members of the racially integrated Freedom Democratic Party challenged the seating of Mississippi’s all-white delegation to the Democratic National Convention. Photo Credit/Chance Wright, The Bolivar Commercial.

The affirmative action program at the University of Texas now under review by the United States Supreme Court should not be looked at in isolation. As Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote in Grutter V. Bollinger, an affirmative action case involving the University of Michigan, “context matters when reviewing race-based governmental action under the Equal Protection Clause.”

Many of us have lived long enough to witness passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which outlawed discriminatory practices that disenfranchised African Americans from their right to vote. Some have lived long enough to have experienced that disenfranchisement. Some of us have even lived long enough to see passage of the 19th Amendment, securing a woman’s right to vote.

As the election between President Obama and Mitt Romney enters the final stretch, Black ministers are becoming more outspoken in taking on colleagues who are urging his defeat because of his support of same-sex marriage.

After three years of steadfastly declaring her innocence, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) has been finally exonerated of allegations that she violated ethics codes in connection with her role in advocating for the inclusion of minority-owned banks in the federal government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program.

In his “I Have a Dream Speech” delivered at the 1963 March on Washington, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said he dreamed of the day his children would be judged not by the color of their skin but the content of their character. If Dr. King had known how Martin III, Dexter and Bernice would later fight over money generated by commercially exploiting his name, he might have omitted any reference to their character. When it comes to money, King’s remaining children have no character.

I wasn’t prepared. I’d been an indirect caregiver, helping my mother move to assisted living near her home in Philadelphia; then later to a senior building near my home in Maryland. After her near death health crisis, it made sense she’d live with me.

Rep. James Clyburn, the third most powerful member of Congress, charges that from the moment President Obama assumed office, Republicans in Congress placed party politics ahead of the interests of the nation.

In an interview last week on the WAUG-AM radio program “Make It Happen,” Clyburn said, “They met on the night that he was sworn-in, and took a blood oath to each other that they would be obstacles to [Obama’s] administration,” Clyburn maintained. “They set out to do so in a way that demonstrates the ultimate in disloyalty to the country.”